


120 steps between you and i

by were1993



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: M/M, hhu in the ER, hospital au, peformance unit in pharmacy, side SeokSoon, side wonhui, vocal unit in the ICU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:09:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28662252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/were1993/pseuds/were1993
Summary: It takes exactly 120 steps to get to the fourth floor from the basement. Minghao counts them every single time a certain doctor asks for special delivery. This was the fifth time today.Aka The elevator has been out of service for 4 months now, but patients still need their medications. The pharmacy technicians are the ones climbing the stairs.
Relationships: Lee Jihoon | Woozi/Xu Ming Hao | The8
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35
Collections: Seventeen Rare Pair Fest: 2 Rare 2 Pair





	120 steps between you and i

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SVTRarePairFest2](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SVTRarePairFest2) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Claim this to write a self prompt.
> 
> (Claims from more than one person are allowed for this prompt!)

**_Prologue: curiosity killed the cat_ **

\---

“Of course, Dr. Lee,” Minghao says with a pleasantly professional voice. “I’ll be up there in a moment.”

Xu Minghao hangs up and sighs deeply. He looks at the clock forlornly. It’s only six in the morning. He had barely gotten into the pharmacy when the phone rang with a familiar number asking for the same thing they always do— _Myungho-ssi, please deliver the fourth floor's medications to the nurse’s station as soon as possible._

Looking around, he tries to find someone else to shove the trip to, but the mornings are busy and always understaffed. The other technician, Wen Junhui, is still in the middle of making the morning IVs, and the only other person in the pharmacy is the new pharmacist, Lee Chan. As much as he wanted to as the newbie to go, Minghao knows they needed at least one pharmacist in the pharmacy—laws, they say.

So he sucks it up and sorts through the IV bags to find all the ones that belong on the fourth floor.

“Jun-ge, any more on the fourth floor?” Minghao calls into the cleanroom. The other technician doesn’t even turn around and just shakes his head minimally. The IV room is the only place Junhui is serious. For good reason, but it still amuses Minghao to no end. Junhui can’t keep his mouth shut in front of the hospital director, but speaking in the IV room? Blasphemy, think about all the bacteria or dust that could contaminate the IVs! “Thanks. I’ll be…on the fourth floor if anyone is looking for me.”

“Oh, could you take a crash cart tray up to the ER too?” Chan asks and accidentally fumbles with the flat plastic box. The glass vials rattle against each other loudly, and the sound is jarring so early in the morning. Minghao flinches and the young pharmacist looks apologetically at the technician.

“Yes,” Minghao sighs. He isn’t annoyed at Chan. No, it’s just too early to be making medication deliveries, and he’s going to go up on all the floors again in half an hour. It’s just—ah, no, he’s not going to complain. “I’ll take it up too.”

Minghao places the IVs into the little delivery carton and stacks the carton atop of the medication tray. Shoving the pharmacy door open with his shoulder, Minghao begins his trek up the stairs. Why not use the employee elevator right next to the pharmacy? Well, he would and used to. Until it broke down four months ago and was never fixed—thank the lack of funding and an incompetent hospital board. Why not use the guest elevator that was down the hall next to the endoscopy lab? Because it was for the patients and if they were caught using it, they would get a slap on the hand. Not ideal for the newly hired technician. 

So he drags his feet up the stairs to the first floor. For once, the ER is relatively calm and only a few sniffling people sat in the uncomfortable plastic chairs. Minghao walks swiftly towards the nursing station and struggles to get his badge to open the medication room door. In a not-very smart move, Minghao left his badge trapped between his stomach and the crash cart tray. While the tray isn’t heavy, it’s bulky and the carton atop of it makes it even hard to maneuver.

“It’s _way_ too early in the morning for this,” Minghao mutters under his breath. He struggles for a moment more, but his badge stays stuck where it is, digging into his abdomen. The technician is about to try and balance the tray on his thigh—it would have been a terrible idea, when a card swipes for him and a helpful hand opens the door. “Oh hey. Thanks.”

“Morning Hao,” Kim Mingyu, the ER charge nurse, greets with a toothy smile. Minghao frowns. There was no way someone was so happy at six in the morning. “It’s a surprise to see you here rather than Jun-hyung.”

“He’s doing the morning IV batch,” Minghao explains, walking through the open door. Mingyu follows and takes the medication tray from him with his delivery carton still on top. Minghao snatches it quickly. “ _This_ goes to the fourth floor.”

“Oh, are you Dr. Lee’s new permanent delivery man?” Mingyu teases. He glances over the tray, muttering the medications— _epi, lidocaine, sodium bicarb, atropine—_ before stashing it into the correct shelf on the crash cart. “Shouldn’t they hire more people in the pharmacy? I swear it’s only you and Jun-hyung down there.”

“In an ideal world, we would have three pharmacists and four technicians for every shift,” Minghao agrees. He leans into the automated medication dispensing machine and punches in his access code. Since he’s here, he might as well check what else is running low. “How do you guys run out of Zofran all the time?”

“Believe it or not, when most people are sick, they feel nauseous,” Mingyu says dryly. “Woah, look at that, an anti-emetic that actually helps with nausea. Fascinating. It’s almost like it was meant to do that.”

“I’m starting to think you guys see more urgent care patients than anything else,” Minghao laughs, wrinkling his nose.

“You aren’t wrong,” Mingyu agrees, shrugging. “Thankfully Hansol’s got everything under control in the front. Bless the lord for good triage nurses.”

“True, as I like to say, our ER is run by the nurses.”

Minghao hastily gets off the dispensing machine but leans back onto it when he sees who swiped in. The emergency medicine doctor, Jeon Wonwoo, is a striking figure in his burgundy tie and ironed white coat. He’s someone who easily commanded respect from his patients, and it helps that the young doctor is handsome with a low, steady speaking voice.

In the early morning, Minghao likes the laidback and quiet Dr. Jeon way more than Dr. Lee upstairs. He looks at the delivery carton and sighs. If he doesn’t get up to the fourth-floor nursing station in the next five minutes, he can already hear Seungkwan whining— _hyung, you know Dr. Lee’s going to get mad at_ us _, you get to go back to your basement cave but we’re stuck with him!_

“How is Jihoon, ah, I mean Dr. Lee?” Wonwoo asks the pharmacy technician. “I don’t see him very often other than at staff meeting and even then, it’s hard to catch him.”

“Quite the morning person as usual,” Mingyu chirps happily, reveling in Minghao’s gloom.

“Ah, so still not sleeping enough?” Wonwoo laughs. Minghao can’t help but chuckle as well. The doctor really does have a beautiful smile. Too bad he’s off-limits—not that Dr. Jeon knows this. “He hasn’t changed a bit since medical school. It’s amazing he’s not living out of his office. Heavens know how he’s still functioning.”

“I’m heading up then,” Minghao sighs. He opens the door and grabs his carton. “Junhui will be around with your med refills. Probably in—eh, half an hour? He’ll be done with IVs and it’ll probably wind down at the pharmacy then.”

“Jun-hyung comes to the ER a lot,” Mingyu muses out loud. He seems to want to continue but quiets immediately at Minghao’s exasperated look. The good doctor had his back facing Minghao so the Chinese technician points rather exaggeratedly to Wonwoo and mouths— _it’s ‘cause of this guy here_.

Subtle Mingyu nods and punctuates it with a drawn out— _oh, I see_. Confused, Wonwoo turns just in time to see Minghao wave cheerfully, swinging the delivery box behind him. 

“What did you see—” the door shuts on the rest of the question, but Minghao is already on his way to the stairs.

He races up the next couple of flights. Thankfully, he bumps into no one and it’s quick trip to the fourth floor. Minghao opens the staircase door slowly, mindful of any possible patients, and walks briskly towards the nursing station. The nurses are either typing at their stations or grabbing charts to their stations. Minghao sighs, of course he would get caught up in pre-round chaos. This is the reason they either delivered medication before or waited until after rounds. No one wants a pharmacy person milling around when there were doctors coming to check up on patients.

“Oh hyung, you’re here,” the floor nurse supervisor, Boo Seungkwan, greets. He’s carrying a stack of papers that looked like the contents of a patient’s chart. Following the technician’s line of sight, Seungkwan looks down and grimaces. “Yeah, we got a binder malfunction. Broken ring and it spilled the patient's records all over the floor. Thank god it had been like 4 in the morning and no one else was walking around. _That_ would have been a HIPPA nightmare.”

“You guys look busy,” Minghao observes, looking around at the frantic bustle. “Busier than usual.”

“That’s 'cause we’re getting audited today,” Seungkwan sighs heavily. The dark circles underneath the other’s eyes are more apparent under the florescent lighting. “It’s an internal audit for the ICU and well, since Seokmin-hyung left and we have no ICU nurse supervisor anymore, guess what I’m doing?”

“Being extra responsible?” Minghao offers. It gets a feeble laugh from the stressed nurse, but even the tiny hint of a smile looked better on the young nurse than that grim frown.

“Yeah, I’ll be happy when this day is over,” Seungkwan chuckles. He takes a deep breath and exhales. “Well, I have to get going.”

“Go Super Nurse Boo!” Minghao cheers and Seungkwan does a dramatic hair flip.

“Of course!” the nurse huffs in exaggerated pomp. They both break out into giggles before waving goodbye.

Minghao skips into the medication bay and starts shuffling the IVs into the cubbies of the appropriate patient. Sorting through the old IVs, Minghao also takes some time to pull out the old and unused bags to take back with him.

He almost skips past Dr. Lee’s office but a small thought hits him—ICU audit, Lee Jihoon is an intensivist. Maybe, just maybe the doctor’s bad mood in the past couple weeks was from the upcoming audit? Maybe, Minghao thinks, maybe he should check up on the tired doctor.

So Minghao walks to the half-open door and knocks hesitantly.

“Come in,” comes the familiar voice only this time not through a phone line.

“Dr. Lee,” Minghao greets, pushing open the door and meeting some resistance. Confused, Minghao looks down to see just papers. Everywhere. He almost forgets what he was going to say when he sees the _mess_ that was the doctor’s office. It doesn’t help that he could barely see the top of the doctor’s head over the stacks of binders. “I—how have you been?”

“About ready to die,” Lee Jihoon admits. Leaning back into his chair, Jihoon takes off his glasses and massages the bridge of his nose. For someone who was older than Minghao, the doctor looked so young in the large chair and among the paper mountains.

“You look like you’re about to die,” Minghao blurts out before he could stop himself. Jihoon looks at Minghao through a gap between the binders and snorts. The technician blinks at the strange reaction. At this point, usually Dr. Lee would have ordered him out and to get back to work, but instead, Jihoon had this amused smile.

“So do you think I look worse now or when Soonyoung left?” Jihoon asks lightly. Minghao freezes. Uh.

\---

Five months ago, Minghao was hired at the Pledis Medical Center’s Pharmacy Department. They had a technician that was leaving them and well, they needed another. So Minghao got hired on and meet Lee Chan, Wen Junhui and Kwon Soonyoung.

“Oh, my boyfriend found a better job out of town,” Soonyoung explained. He was so quick with nightly cart fills that Minghao could barely keep up. Soonyoung was filling for rooms on two whole floors and he was already done with one floor. Minghao just finished identifying which medications go in the cart and which ones didn’t for three rooms. “He’s the nurse supervisor on the fourth floor ICU unit, but he’s been looking to work at a hospice. A good opportunity came up, and we’re moving at the end of the month!”

“And that’s why Soonyoung-hyung is _always_ on the fourth floor instead of down here helping us,” Junhui interjected. The other Chinese technician was busy sorting out take backs, unused medications that came back to the pharmacy in the carts. “Too busy making heart eyes at his man.”

“To be fair, it was because Jihoonie keeps calling me upstairs,” Soonyoung laughed. He was a joyous person and it was infectious. He frowned in an obvious imitation of someone if Junhui’s laughter was anything to go by. “ _Please delivery the medications up right now Soonyoung in the next ten minutes. My patients need them_. I became best friends with the security guys. They saw me in the elevator like six times a day.”

“You would never have met Seokmin without it,” Junhui teased. “So in a way, all your hard work paid off.”

“That’s true,” Soonyoung smiled softly. Minghao couldn’t believe love stories like this actually happened. Their entire history sounded like a badly written Korean drama, yet here it was completely unscripted. “I guess I do owe it to Dr. Lee huh?”

“Can you imagine if he asked me to deliver them instead?” Junhui pondered.

“Well, his patients would be dead,” Soonyoung answered with a wicked smile. He leaned towards Minghao and stage whispered, “After all, he’d get stuck on the first floor because of a certain emergency medicine doctor—”

“Soonyoungie!” Junhui gasped in betrayal. “Gossiping to the newbie already?”

“Like _you_ didn’t,” Soonyoung crackled. “I heard what you told him about Mingyu— _great guy but married, don’t bother_.”

“That’s not gossiping!” Junhui huffed. He abandoned his task and placed a protective arm around Minghao’s shoulders. “I gotta protect my own. Minghao, he’s hot and friendly but taken.”

Soonyoung trained him for a good three weeks before the pharmacy department threw him a goodbye party. His goodbye was short but heartfelt—with a lot of tears, and Minghao was genuinely sad to see the older man go.

A week later, the employee elevator broke down. A week after that, Minghao picked up a call from Dr. Lee for the first time.

“Pharmacy, this is Myungho,” Minghao says automatically, hands still flying to count and package orders.

“ _Is Soonyoung there?_ ”

“No, Soonyoung left like two weeks ago,” Minghao answered. “How can I help you”—Minghao looked at the extension number and to the cheat sheet pinned above the telephone, the in-house intensivist, there was only one—“Dr. Lee?”

“ _Left, like on vacation?_ ”

“Oh, he like left as in he doesn’t work here anymore,” Minghao answered on autopilot. The patient ID number didn’t match with the ID number printed on the label, but it was the patient’s name. Ugh, what happened—

“ _He left?!_ ”

Startled at the sudden loud shout, Minghao almost dropped the phone but he did drop the labels he was scrutinizing. They fluttered to the floor and Minghao reached down to pick them up again.

“Yeah, he and his boyfriend moved to another city,” Minghao continued, squeezing the phone handset firmly between his cheek and shoulder. He picked up the labels and returned them to the counter. The technician almost missed the sharp intake of breath. Minghao didn’t miss it though and he listens quietly as the other collect himself again.

“ _I—just bring up the meds for the fourth floor_ ,” the voice says softly. “ _My patients—my patients need them_.”

The phone hung up before Minghao could say another word. Staring at the phone, Minghao wonders what happened. Dr. Lee— _he’s a fantastic doc but can get a little grumpy so just be understanding if he gets a little harsh_ , Junhui had said—sounded so sad? Desolate? Heartbroken?

“Uh, Dr. Lee asked for meds to be delivered to the fourth floor,” Minghao announced to the pharmacy. He wasn’t sure what kind of response he was looking for but he looked around anyway.

“Then go,” Junhui called from the back room. He looked up from his phone and shrugged. “I’m still on break but I’ll fill in for you if any orders come through when you’re gone.”

“Okay,” Minghao said. He packed all the medications on the shelves for the fourth floor in a convenient little carrier and headed out of the pharmacy.

His mind buzzed with questions as he trekked upstairs— _38, 39, 40,_ Minghao counted in his head, _112, 113,_ _is the doctor alright?_

Minghao had been up to the fourth floor before, shadowing Soonyoung during his training period, so he knew where the medication room was and what his job was. He knew the layout of the ICU and that there was a corridor that he never went down because it was a long way around.

“Jihoonie’s office—er, I mean Dr. Lee’s office is down there,” Soonyoung had explained. The older man had scrunched his nose in embarrassment. “Ah, I’ve known Jihoon since we were in undergrad so it’s weird to call him doctor sometimes, but it’s good manners to call any of the doctors by their title on the floor. Professionalism and whatnot.”

Making up his mind, Minghao walked towards the long corridor. He told himself he was just curious—it’s a part of the hospital he’s never been to—and for no other reason.

He said that that to himself again when he reached an office door with the plaque _Dr. Lee Jihoon, Intensivist_ on the wall to the side.

Minghao repeated it to himself even more feebly when he knocked and met Lee Jihoon for the first time.

\---

_But satisfaction brought it back._

**Author's Note:**

> 'ello, so i wrote this 4 years ago when I was actually working at a hospital in the US LMAO so the hospital setting is that of the US (ex. the HIPPA regulations) and i guess just forgive me for switching up country healthcare codes
> 
> I've always wanted to share this at some point 'cause i still have friends and family who work in the hospital setting lmao the hospital setting (for however flawed the american healthcare system is) is still very dear to me, i have fond memories of my time there working with reliable and fun colleagues
> 
> I will admit I don't know how or when I'll come back to this, but I hope the casual hospital au was fun!


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